


Crooked

by sunlian



Category: Jade Empire
Genre: F/F, Pre-Relationship, Unknowningly Pining, waxing poetic about smiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 01:15:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19937611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunlian/pseuds/sunlian
Summary: Ling has a crooked smile. Lian is fascinated by it.





	Crooked

**Author's Note:**

> From my notes

It’s the most curious thing.

Perhaps it’s so interesting to her because of her background, of the way she was raised. In the Imperial Palace, she was surrounded by servants, trained to keep their faces schooled into neutral masks on pain of punishment, or nobles, with their painfully fake smiles and shallow grief; truly, it seemed they only expressed themselves honestly when angry, fury rearing its’ head from behind their painted masks.

Every facet of their emotions were used for a reason. Perfect, cultured and weaponised, utterly without genuine feeling.

That had to be it, that _had_ to be why she noticed at all.

Ling’s smile was crooked.

It pulled to the left side of her face, every time, without fail, each time she smiled. And she smiled often. She smiled at the sky, and at the clouds. She smiled at the throngs of people moving about the city. She smiled at the small dogs that littered the Golden Way and the marketplaces. She smiled at the merchants, at the blacksmiths, and the various cooks selling their street food. She smiled at Dawn Star, Sky, Wild Flower, Kang, the Black Whirlwind, Hou, even Sagacious Zu.

She smiled at her too. She smiled at her a lot. When she did, it made her stomach tighten and flip, and blood would rush unbidden to her face and ears.

Lian assured herself it was simple curiousity. She had never seen anything like it- like her- before, and so naturally, she would be curious.

And when she was curious about something, she would spend time analysing it, committing it to memory. And there’s far more unpleasant things to memorise.

It had taken less a week to memorise all of the ways Ling smiled. The bright, big grins that seemed to take over her entire face, to the smaller, shyer smiles. _Those_ were rare, and nearly always directed at her.

She wasn’t entirelt sure what it meant, or fin it meant anything at all, but Lian enjoyed them. Subjectively, of course. As a curiousity. She had simply never met anyone so open with their emotions, so free with their happiness.

It was merely a pleasing side benefit, then, that she really did love that crooked smile.


End file.
